and extended the boundary of its domains, and devoted the rest of his days to building and planting, corn laws and the country, yet to this there was a very adverse influence.

We all know, either from experience or observation, that Janus would be a very appropriate marriage deity, inasmuch as he has two faces, which look opposite ways. Lady Mandeville was, as I have said, compounded of all the elements of society: its love of excitementits necessity of variety—its natural gift of language-its grace inherent and its grace acquired -its vivacity and its vanity. She liked talking-she looked very pretty when she talked; she liked strangers-every stranger was a new idea; and her mind was of that order which requires collision to bring out its sparkles. She read as an amusement, rather than as a resource—and, moreover, thought the information almost thrown away which was not communicated.

Again, she was accustomed to look at things on their ridiculous in preference to their sentimental side. She loved her husband most entirely; but she thought it a great deal pleasanter to spend the morning, while he was away, in gay visits or a drive round the ring,

than to sit with a work-basket in a large lonely saloon, with the pictures of their ancestors looking as if they had indeed lost all sympathy with the living. Besides, a call, in an adjacent street, on one whose milliner is not the same, and whose friends are similar to your own-thus giving ample room for praise and its reverse-such a call is quite another thing from one in the country, which involves, first, a journey through wilds that " lengthening as you go;" and secondly, a luncheon, which it is your duty to eat. Alas! when, in this world, are the agreeable and the necessary united! Then your neighbour is a person whom you see twice a-year-you have not a taste or opinion in common-the news of the one is no news to the other. tion is a frozen ocean, and

"You speak,

Only to break

The silence of that sea."

seem

conversa

Now these were not mornings to Lady Mandeville's taste. As for the dinners, she had only one comfort, that of abusing them after ;an unspeakable consolation, by the by, in most cases! I cannot see why a taste for the coun

try should be held so very indispensable a requisite for excellence; but really people talk of it as if it were a virtue, and as if an opposite opinion was, to say the least of it, very immoral.

Lady Mandeville's was essentially a town nature. She was born to what she was fit for; she was originally meant to be ornamental, rather than useful. In short, she exactly resembled a plume of ostrich feathers, or a blond dress; now, these are best worn in the metropolis. The inference from all this is, that though Lord Mandeville often talked of settling at his country seat, he never actually settled.

The walk was ended, for the domains were not very extensive, and the gentlemen returned home. They afterwards rode out; and Emily felt very happy in the mere consciousness that the cavalier at her bridle rein was Edward Lorraine.

That vague, self-relying, uncalculating hap→ piness, how delicious it is—that which we never know but once, and which can have but one object! Emily quite forgot how wretched she had been. She recalled not the once agony of his presence the despondency in his absence. She never looked at him; she scarce spoke, but

she heard his voice, and she saw his shadow fall by her side.

Curious, that of the past our memory retains so little of what is peculiarly its own. The book we have read, the sight we have seen, the speech we have heard, these are the things to which it recurs, and that rise up within it. We remember but what can be put to present use. It is very extraordinary how little we recollect of hopes, fears, motives, and all the shadowy tribe of feelings; or indeed, how little we think over the past at all. Memory is that mirror wherein a man "beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was." We are reproached with forgetting others we forget ourselves a thousand times more. We remember what we hear, see, and read, often accurately: not so with what we felt that is faint and uncertain in its record. Memory is the least egotistical of all our faculties.

CHAPTER XII.

""Tis he!

What doth he here ?"- BYRON.

"WHAT! loitering still, Emily?" said Lady Mandeville, when, on entering the breakfastroom, she found her and Edward Lorraine employed, apparently, in looking over some scattered drawings—in reality in talking. Emily, happy without thinking it at all necessary to analyse, and so destroy her happiness; and Edward, if not exactly thinking, yet feeling, it a very pleasant thing to have a most absorbed listener, who was not the less agreeable for being young and pretty. He was engaged in turning the leaves, occasionally referring to his companion. Edward possessed one great fascination in discourse. He had the air of truly valuing the opinion he asked.

"Nous ne nous aimions pas, mais notre indifférence
Avait bien les symptômes de l'amour,"

thought Lady Mandeville. "I must disturb